Star Wars Imperial Commando: New Order
by heartonfire
Summary: Palpatine's New Order has engulfed the galaxy, leaving a squad of Commando's questioning their existence. Placed in the care of a young Mandalorian, they are expected to carry out special ops for the Empire. But their lives have been changed forever.


**_Imperator_-class Star Destroyer 'Executrix'**

**En Route to Kamino**

**150 Days after Order 66**

When they said we'd be shipped back to Kamino for 'reconditioning', my brothers and I instantly assumed they were using military slang for 'extermination'. The war – the Clone War – had been over for weeks, the galaxy had fallen in line behind it's newly self-appointed Emperor and everything was quiet.

_Too quiet_.

The entire end of the war was too quiet, the fighting suddenly stopping. Any soldier, cloned or not, knows that wars don't just end because someone says so. Grievous is dead, the Jedi have staged a coup, the Sep leaders are down… good job boys, war over.

No.

This was too… organised, too well staged. Nobody even questioned it, save for a few. There were rumours of a Commando squad who were executed on Murkhana for failing to follow Order 66, executed by the mysterious new enforcer working at old Palpatine's side. Vader… Darth Vader. The Empire's own General Grievous.

After that, many of us were given simple security tasks; overseeing the neutralisation of Separatist worlds, keeping the peace on Triple Zero, escorting high-ranking Imperials between one core world to the next. It was all a little… anticlimatic.

Of course, none of us had been prepared for life after the war. Our entire lives were built around it; we were bred for it, trained for it from the moment we could walk, until our lives were nothing but tactics and orders.

And now this. _Reconditioning_, as they so eloquently put it. More training, drill exercises, new armour and new orders from the top. I guess the Empire found a way to pay off the Kaminoan's for this, despite the Republic being unable to afford reinforcements toward the wars end. I don't see what training could possibly be needed; me and my brothers, my _vode_, were trained by the best. Sergeant Dralin, a man so hard that some say he bleeds durasteel. Of all the squads he trained before Geonosis, only two were wiped out. Well… mostly two. One of the commando squads lost three men and the fourth was put into another squad, Omega, but the point is that there was nobody better than Arumane Dralin, and we don't need any more training to see that the Empire doesn't yet have any use for us.

"Ok lads, _buy'ces_ on, you know what the _shabla kaminiise_ are like. One look at your scars, Kando, and they'll be slamming you in the furnace as a bad product". That was our sarge, Tracyn. He was right… the Kaminoans were perfectionists, and one look at my scars – one down my eye, and one across my nose – would send them into a frenzy. Damaged products, not that the damage they did to us was any less severe.

"You gotta be kidding sarge, one look at you and the _di'kutla_ aiwha bait will send us all packing back to Coruscant". That was Ordin, our demolitions expert, who prided himself on his ability to blow up a droid factory in three standard minutes. I have to admit, the first time he achieved it, even I was impressed.

"So what's the tally now, sarge?" asks Asha, our slicer. He nods to Tracyn's armour, specifically the helmet, which is covered in scratches. At first glance those scratches look like battle damage, until you notice the precision with which they've been made. Somehow, Tracyn is able to keep an exact kill count, even in the heat of battle. He says it keeps him going, keeps him focused. And at the end of each battle, he marks them off on his armour; one scratch for every fifty killed.

"25 marks, fifteen hundred dead. Not counting the 30 wets I slotted at the end of the war" Tracyn replies.

"Still waiting to make up the other twenty, sarge?"

"No point now is there? After our reconditioning, it'll be new armour all around. No more shiny Katarn, just black. Boring black."

"I heard it worked for Omega…"

"Yeah, Kando, but it was still Katarn. I'm not sure how this stuff'll hold up".

The most Tracyn had said before this was how he hopes the Empire is willing to shell out for armour that stands up to Katarn-class, or improves on it. We all know he'll fight every last Kaminoan before he gives up his Katarn armour though… if there's one lesson Tracyn remembers from Dralin, it's that your armour is a second skin. And it's not so easy to give up that skin just because the people at the top want a uniform change. Especially not when that skin contains the memoirs of a war you fought your _shebs_ off to win.

We finally decide to put on our _buy'ces_ – buckets, helmets, or pint of ale depending on the context – and continue our conversation in the private internal commlink that renders us silent to the outside world. Except the conversation doesn't continue. There's too much going on in our heads, I can tell. Because my mind is burning with questions, anticipation, and… yes, fear.

Fear, because none of us knows what lies ahead. Shab, we may not even be in the same squad after this. I've spent all my life with my brothers, Terra Squad. Now, I'm not even sure there _will be_ a Terra Squad.


End file.
